Rainey’s Revenge – Pensacola Metal Goodness

Although we are happy to support every type of music – we are human and have our favorites. At the tip-top of that list is metal – a genre with a ridiculous amount of subgenres.

The Pensacola based Rainey’s Revenge has made their stamp on the local scene. Vocalist John chatted with us about who Rainey is, what the band sounds like, and a bit of overhead advice from the late Mitch Lucker of Suicide Silence.

“We sound like a metal band,” John says with a laugh.

When comes to neatly labeling that band as a single subgenre, neither John or myself are able to find that perfect fit. “We have heard a hundred of them about us,” explains John. “The one I used to hear the most about us is deathcore. I see the comparison – we have a lot of death metal influence and lot of modern day hardcore influence as well. I guess in a nutshell that is the two ingredients to make a deathcore band.”

“I kind of consider deathcore to be dropped tuned guitars and slow breakdowns, and we don’t have a lot of that. We have a lot of influence of deathcore – I see how we fit in that genre.”

“I tell people that we are an extreme metal band. If you like some form of extreme metal you are likely to like us.”

Members of Rainey’s Revenge knew each other, jammed together, and even had side projects before RR came into full view.

“When we formed what became Rainey’s Revenge, our first five songs came together really quickly. And we were making enough noise that our first three shows we booked were pretty big bands. The first one was Wretched who is on Victory Records. Our third one was with Suicide Silence and All Shall Perish – which was a pretty big deal.”

You can’t say the name Suicide Silence without thinking about the talent and loved personality that the metal community lost with the 2012 death of frontman Mitch Lucker.

“I’ve always respected Suicide Silence frontman Mitch. His highs were perfect. When Rainey’s Revenge started to go the direction we were, I really wanted to nail that vocal style. It was a big deal to do that show, on top of it was one of the last tours that Suicide Silence did (with Mitch). It was already an honor that I got to play with him, even before his unfortunate passing.”

“A cool quote he said one time, long before there was a Rainey’s Revenge, it was like 2006 and it was at this small venue. Mitch didn’t actually say it to me, but I was going to buy a CD, and some kid behind me goes ‘Dude how are you guys not signed?’ And he said “Because we don’t want to sign to a shitty label.’ That was all he said.”

“I thought it was such an awesome answer because at the time they weren’t signed. They were distributed soley by themselves and Century Media came to them about it later. I was a fan every since.”

As for their band name? John admits, “My girlfriend at the time coined the term. Rainey is actually a character in the movie ‘Secret Window’.”

“When we got the show with Suicide Silence, it was the first show we had booked, but we didn’t have a name at the time. We went through all these terrible names. Me and Laura were at our apartment, we were watching Secret Window. I came up with the idea of Rainey’s Field. It was kind of cool, but eh. When I was at practice later that night, she texted me and said what about Rainey’s Revenge? I kind of said it out loud, and everyone thought it was pretty cool. It just stuck and we went with it.”

Rainey’s Revenge will be hitting the studio in the coming weeks, hoping to have a new release that includes remasters of older songs and several new songs available in February of 2014.

“We wanted to make something really heavy – that was going to hit really hard and isn’t cliche. I like to think that’s us.”